30 Day Challenge: Day 24

When I hear someone say, "I do not need the church, I can get all the God I need at home with my Bible," when I hear that I cringe inside. Do the Scriptures contain everything needed for salvation? Absolutely. Does isolation allow you you experience, live into, and fully take part in that salvation? Also;ute;y not.

Say you wanted to be a football player. You could get books on football and spend months reading them, You could read play books of great coaches. You could get videos of football and spend hours at home watching them. When you done, do you know what it is like to be a football player, no. It is not until you take the field and join a team that you see what being a football player is like. In the practices, hands on applications, and then on game day when you hear the crowd, make the big play and feel the exhileration and connection with your team do you experience what it is like to be a football player.

In the same way, you can spend years in your room reading the Bible and other book on Christianity. You can download sermons and teachings from great men and women of faith. You can place a kneeler in you living room and spend hours there in prayer. At the end of that time do you know what it is like to be a Christian, no. It is only when you go out and join in the body of Christ, serve, minister, worship, and be vulnerable to and with others do you understand what it is like to live out your salvation. When you are active with the church serving and worshipping, giving and sharing burdens, and you encounter the Holy Spirit in that interaction with others that you truly experience what it is like: the joy, hope, love of being a Christian.